The next major stopover on the trip was Coyhaique. This is the largest town in Chilean Patagonia by far, with a population of 63,000 people. I'm sure there is lots of good hiking around this town, as you can see in the picture below, it's nestled against a foothill. Good climbing too; that granite half dome looking thing was free soloed by Alex Honnold not long before we got to town. Anyways, our main objectives in Coyhaique were to restock supplies and do laundry, so we stayed in another Airbnb to do so. Our next Airbnb won't be for another month, so this was our last bit of ease and space for awhile.
The boys were getting pretty shaggy, and they finally realized shorter hair can be more comfortable when you're running around hot and sweaty in the brambles, so they agreed to haircuts. From Saja boys to Preppies, jajaja.
The town square of Coyhaique, which was very cute, had an area where a man brought out his own chess boards, probably 8 or so, and encouraged people to play totally for free. Drew couldn't resist the chance to play someone of his caliber in person, so he did, and he won! Good job, babe!
The boys played a game of their own too. Emerson has really taken to chess, and now when I play him, it's 50/50 who wins and who loses, and I'm really trying! Negative thinking: how am I losing to a 7-year old? Positive thinking: my offspring is good enough to beat an adult at 7! I'm going with positive for my own self esteem. Jajaja.
Coyhaique, being the biggest town in Chilean Patagonia, had more than its fair share of mountaineering stores, including a Patagonia store, which I had to go in. This is the only Patagonia store in all of Patagonia, actually! Was it any cheaper than normal? No, no it was not.
After Coyhaique, we drove over the mountain pass called Portezuelo Ibáñez, otherwise known as Cuesta del Diablo (Devil's Slope). It's the highest pass we will do on our trip, but funny enough it only gets up to 3,600 ft. That has been a big aha moment of this journey. None of these mountains down here are actually that high from an elevation perspective. The city of Denver is much higher in elevation than the top of this mountain pass. But the mountains still look super rugged and there are so many more glaciers here than in Colorado, I suppose simply because of the latitude of the area. Cold ocean currents from Antartica and the winds that constantly whip through here keep things chilly. There are no other major land masses this far south. I googled it, and the latitude of Puerto Natales, our southern most destination, (but not even the farthest south on the continent!) is 51.73 S while the southern tip of New Zealand is only at 47.29 S. So, there is nothing to block the wind and slow it down as it circles the globe traveling west to east. It picks up speed all across the ocean, then slams into the Andes on the Chilean side, dumping any and all moisture, hence the glaciers. The wind then squeezes through any valleys and gorges it can find, which makes the winds even more extreme until everything calms down when it gets to the Argentinian side, which is dry, dry, dry. It's the same phenomenon that happens in the Rockies; the Western slope is much greener, while the Colorado side is super dry. But add the latitude to the equation, and the effect is extreme. We've already noticed the wind is getting stronger and stronger as we proceed south.
Back to the mountain pass. This one, for me, wasn't nearly as bad as the one in Queulat National Park because it's paved the entire way. The steepest section is going down the pass into Villa Cerro Castillo, so I'm sure if we were traveling in the other direction, it would have felt much more daunting. And icy winter conditions would absolutely make it much worse. This pass wasn't created until 1953, so before that, the town of Villa Cerro Castillo was entirely cut off from the north of Chile. It was actually more connected to Argentina because of the town a bit farther south, Puerto Rio Tranquilo (the next stop on our itinerary), which shares a huge lake with Argentina. Anyways, once you go over the pass and start coming down into the Ibáñez River Valley, my mouth literally fell open in shock, it was so gorgeous. I have been in alot of mountain valleys, and this one was by far the prettiest I have been in my life. Thanks to Karen for all of the shots with Don Diego in front, a fun perspective for us.
This is the actual Cerro Castillo or Castle Mountain. We're currently reading the Harry Potter books with the boys, so they called it Hogwarts. We only saw the mountain completely clear like this one morning for about an hour; the rest of the 2 days we were there, it was half shrouded in clouds. Drew and I got to do a hike called Laguna Cerro Castillo which got us to a teal colored glacial lake right at the bottom of this, and it was spectacular. This hike has the most bang for your buck of any hike I've been on with views almost the entire way. Highly recommend.
The next day, we went and had lunch at a cool cafe, where they had converted two buses into an eatery. One bus was filled with tables, the second bus was the kitchen. Would highly recommend this spot, it's all made to order, delicious stuff. And the boys, of course, were in love. Lunch inside a bus!
Our last spot before heading out of town was the Paredón de los Manos, which is a place where you can see 3,000 year old hand prints painted on a valley wall. Pretty cool.
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